


breaking the habit

by emmerrr



Series: To live will be an awfully big adventure [24]
Category: All For The Game - Nora Sakavic
Genre: Established Relationship, M/M, Post-Canon, Smoking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-14
Updated: 2019-01-14
Packaged: 2019-10-10 07:48:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,560
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17421848
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/emmerrr/pseuds/emmerrr
Summary: Neil comes home with some nicotine patches.





	breaking the habit

Andrew’s sitting out on the balcony with his morning coffee and his morning cigarette. It’s Saturday, still early enough that it’s fairly quiet on the streets below. Neil is out for run, but is due back any minute now. There’s coffee in the pot for him, an empty mug with a fox face on it sitting and waiting on the counter to be filled.

It’s an unremarkable day, but Andrew never envisioned he’d have anything like this, so he supposes there _is_ something remarkable about that.

He takes a leisurely drag of his cigarette then glares down at the cat sitting at his feet, staring up at him expectantly.

“You’ve already been fed,” he tells King, and she chirps indignantly in response. “You _have_."

The argument is cut short there, however, as King’s ears twitch and she suddenly darts back inside. A second later Andrew hears the click of the front door shut and Neil murmuring something inaudible to King.

Footsteps and yowls grow louder as they approach the kitchen, and then Neil says, “You _do_ have food, it’s in your bowl, I _fed_ you.” An exasperatedly fond sigh, and then the sound of a food bowl being shaken. “See? It’s not empty.”

It’s a daily occurrence in the Josten-Minyard household, and Andrew almost smiles at the familiarity. He looks to Sir, lazing in a patch of morning sunlight in the corner, and thinks he has the right idea. “At least one of you has a brain,” he says.

A moment later Neil steps out onto the balcony with his coffee, and he smiles at Andrew and plants a kiss on the top of his head. “Morning, sunshine,” he says, because he’s an unrepentant little shit.

Neil sits in the other seat and casually puts something on the table next to Andrew’s ashtray, then takes a sip of his coffee. He says nothing about it, and soon curiosity gets the better of Andrew and he glances at the table.

“Neil,” he says impassively.

“Hm?”

“What are these?”

It’s a rhetorical question, really. Andrew can see what they are, and he knows Neil will know that too. But still, Neil plays along. “They’re nicotine patches.”

“Nicotine patches,” Andrew repeats drily. “I wouldn’t have thought you’d need them.”

“Oh, I don’t,” Neil says easily. “They’re for you.”

Andrew’s cigarette is all but spent, and he puts it out properly in his ashtray. He considers the nicotine patches and tries to muster up how to feel about them. It’s not like he’s unaware that his smoking is an addiction. Similarly, it’s not like he’s unaware that it’s _bad_ for him. But the fact that it was bad for him had sort of always been the point.

Out of all of Andrew’s vices, smoking is now the one he’s had the longest relationship with.

There’s something a little off-putting about that thought.

It’s no secret that his coach wants him to stop smoking. Kevin’s been on at him for years about it, and even Aaron has been known to send the odd text featuring statistics of smoking-related illnesses that Andrew always deletes without reading.

The difference is that Neil’s never asked him to stop before, even though it’s now been some time since he’s smoked himself. Then again it was never really about the smoking for Neil; it was about the burning, the smell, the reminder. And apparently he didn’t need it anymore.

“I never asked you to get me these,” Andrew says eventually.

“I know,” Neil replies. “They’re there if you want them.”

There’s no question in his tone. He hasn’t actually asked Andrew to _do_ anything. He’s purchased some nicotine patches, which are now accessible to Andrew should he have need of them. There is no obligation here; he can take them or leave them.

Andrew nods slowly. He drains the rest of his coffee. He goes back inside.

He does not pick up the patches.

 

* * *

 

There’s no mention of the incident until Wednesday, when Andrew lights up on the way back to the car after practice. Neil pulls the nicotine patches out of his pocket and waves them at Andrew.

“I still have these.” He shrugs. “Y’know. Just in case you’d forgotten.”

“Nope,” Andrew says. “Hadn’t forgotten.”

He stares at Neil, and Neil stares right back. Andrew’s too practised at this game to break first, and soon enough Neil grins, shakes his head, and puts the patches back in his pocket. “Okay.”

He gets into the car and says nothing else about it, and Andrew might have thought that would be the end of it.

It turns out that Neil is committed to playing the long game. The patches start showing up in all sorts of places over the next couple of weeks.

Andrew finds them in his underwear drawer, in the medicine cabinet, in the side-pocket of his duffel, in the glove-compartment of his car, in his locker (it was nice to see Neil still had lingering knowledge of how to pick a lock).

Usually, Andrew finds them when Neil is not there, rolls his eyes and then leaves them. They’ll disappear and then reappear somewhere else again in the next day or two. But the time he finds them in the locker, Neil _is_ there, because his locker is right next to Andrew’s.

Andrew sighs and holds the patches up, raising an eyebrow at Neil. “Are you kidding with this?”

Neil shrugs. “I was just making sure you had seen them.”

“Uh huh. I’ve seen them. In my locker and in the car and in my fucking underwear drawer.”

Neil smiles; it dimples in his cheek and Andrew scowls and looks away. It’s harder to be annoyed when Neil looks so goddamn adorable.

“Look,” Neil says, “I’m just trying to keep them close at hand for you, that’s all. You never know when you might feel like using one.”

He’s all light and breezy, a nonchalant tone he most _definitely_ learned from Allison, but Andrew isn’t fooled. “Why are you pushing this?”

The smile slowly drops from Neil’s face and he turns back to his locker. “No reason.”

“Neil.”

“I said no reason, Andrew.” He shuts his locker and shoulders his duffel. “I’ll meet you at the car.”

All of Neil’s secrets were laid bare a long time ago and he doesn’t typically lie to Andrew anymore, so although Andrew doesn’t believe him when he says there’s no reason, he doesn’t want to straight up accuse Neil of lying. More likely is that Neil just doesn’t want to talk about the crux of the issue yet, and so trying to force him to will get Andrew nowhere.

He’s almost fluent in Neil at this point. He can wait.

 

* * *

 

By the time Andrew catches up to Neil at the car, Neil is back to normal. He doesn’t mention the nicotine patches again and neither does Andrew.

They also stop appearing everywhere Andrew looks, which means Neil’s either given up trying or he’s biding his time.

Andrew, whilst he doesn’t _stop_ smoking, starts making an effort to only smoke when Neil isn’t around. Whatever’s triggered it, the smoking is clearly bothering him, and so Andrew tries not to rub it in his face. He smokes when Neil’s out for a run or at the gym, he smokes whenever he runs errands alone, he smokes early in the morning when Neil’s still asleep.

It’s not like Neil will think he’s stopped; he can smell it on him, after all. But it seems to be some small compromise, until Neil’s ready to be honest.

The following Monday afternoon when they get home after practice, Andrew and Neil collapse onto the sofa together. Andrew’s reading some old thriller that he picked up in a used bookstore, and Neil’s lying with his head in Andrew’s lap. He was texting Kevin, but his phone’s been back in his pocket for a while now and Andrew thinks he’s fallen asleep.

But then, he speaks.

“I’ve been thinking a lot about death.”

Andrew goes perfectly still.

“Not like that,” Neil adds quickly.

Andrew’s appreciative of the clarification, although it makes sense; Neil Josten is a lot of things, but he’s never been suicidal. Andrew dog ears his place in the book then tosses it onto the coffee table.

With the gentleness he only ever reserves for Neil, he places one hand in Neil’s hair and softly traces the lines of his face with the other.

“Why have you been thinking about death?”

For a moment, Neil doesn’t speak, doesn’t move, doesn’t open his eyes. He just lies there and lets Andrew’s touch ground him. Then he catches Andrew’s hand in his own and sits up. This is clearly a face-to-face conversation.

“I thought I’d be dead by now,” he says simply. “For a long time I was just surviving on a day-by-day basis, and then Coach showed up at Millport with you and Kevin and got me to sign that contract. And then I went to PSU and shit started going down and I _knew_ then, in my bones, that I’d be dead by the end of the school year. Yet that’s the first time I started really _living,_ when I was convinced I was going to die.”

It’s not often that Neil talks about this, and it’s especially rare these days as it gets further and further into the past with each passing year, but the reminder still feels like Andrew’s had the wind knocked out of him. How close, how earth-shatteringly close he was to losing Neil for good.

“And then it just...didn’t happen.” Neil shrugs, like it’s no big deal, but Andrew squeezes his hand because it is. Neil’s alive and he’s here and he’s with Andrew, and that’s...well, that’s _everything._ But he can’t say that. Not yet, at least, because Neil isn’t done.

“It was suddenly like I was living off bonus time, and I never knew when it was going to run out, so I still just kept taking the days as they came. It took a really long time to stop living in survival mode. But I had you and I had my friends, my Foxes, and eventually I managed to fucking—” he breaks off and gestures at the apartment, at Andrew, at the cats— “build a life out of the wreckage.”

He holds Andrew’s gaze, and he smiles. “And now that I _have_ that life, I want to keep it for as long as I can. I want to grow old, and I want you to do it with me.”

Realisation dawns on Andrew. _“That’s_ why you want me to stop smoking. You think I’m going to die of lung cancer or some shit.”

Neil pokes him in the leg reproachfully. “Well, it’s at least a fucking concern, asshole.”

Andrew pokes him back, which serves to momentarily devolve the conversation into a poking war, but then Neil lets out a breathy laugh that’s devoid of any real humour.

“Andrew, I’m serious.”

“I know you are. Why didn’t you say something sooner? Why didn’t you just...ask?”

“I dunno, I didn’t want to? Not for this?”

Andrew doesn’t get it; he shakes his head, and Neil sighs in frustration.

“It’s that old ongoing joke that the upperclassmen used to have, isn’t it? That I can just ask and you’ll do it. And I thought that if I asked you to give up smoking, maybe you would. Or you’d at least _try._ But I didn’t want you to do it because _I_ wanted you to. I wanted you to do it because _you_ wanted to. Because it’s not good for you and it might make you sick and hopefully you wanted to stick around a bit longer maybe, or...I don’t know, Andrew. I didn’t want to force you to stop if you really didn’t want to.”

Andrew doesn’t respond while he processes what Neil has said. It isn’t that he’s totally against the idea of quitting smoking, but it’s a habit, and it’s been a comfort, and it was so ingrained now. Even this conversation was making him itch for a cigarette.

“You know, I might _not_ get cancer,” he says in the end.

“True,” Neil allows, but he pouts about it.

“I could get hit by a bus or suffer a brain aneurysm or fall down the stairs and break my neck.”

“Alright, you’re really not fucking helping,” Neil says, and he rests his cheek against the back of the sofa. His expression is troubled and Andrew doesn’t like it.

“I’m not trying to be an asshole.”

“No? Must just come naturally, then,” Neil says, but there’s a glimmer of a smile there again.

“It does, actually,” Andrew retorts. “What I meant was, even if I stop smoking and start living the healthy life Kevin has always dreamed for me, it still doesn’t guarantee that I’ll be here forever. We don’t know what’s going to happen.”

“I _know_ that. But smoking is something you have control over. Whether you stop or not is entirely on you.” All at once, Neil seems utterly done; overcome with whatever nameless emotion brought on all of these thoughts in the first place. He scoots closer and drops his forehead onto Andrew’s shoulder.

His words are muffled and his voice shaky, but Andrew still hears as he says, “Call me selfish, but I want you by my side for as long as you’ll have me. And if you stopping smoking extends that time then I’m all for it.”

Neil finally seems to be finished now. Andrew rests a hand on the back of his head, kisses his temple, waits until the tension has leached out of Neil’s posture.

“I don’t want to make you any promises,” he says. “But I will...try.” Neil leans back to look at Andrew’s face, but Andrew cups the back of his neck gently so he won’t go too far. “I’ll try to cut back. And maybe stop.”

Neil does a very good job at not smiling too wide, but he nods, and says, “Okay.”

“No promises.”

Neil holds his hands up. “No promises.”

Andrew drops his gaze to Neil’s lips, and Neil nods, so he kisses him, sweet and slow. Neil hums happily into it and rests his forehead against Andrew’s when they stop.

“What do you feel like doing now?” he asks.

“I feel like I really want a cigarette,” Andrew deadpans. “But I’ll settle for kissing you.”

“Yeah, okay,” Neil says with a wicked grin. “I'd say that’s fair.”

 

* * *

 

The next morning, Andrew stands in front of the coffee-machine, waiting for it to finish brewing. Neil, who had taken an uncharacteristic lie-in, sidles up behind him, perching his chin on Andrew’s shoulder.

He runs his hand down Andrew’s arm and freezes halfway down his bicep.

“Andrew,” he says carefully. “What’s this on your arm?”

It’s a rhetorical question; Andrew knows full-well that Neil knows what it is. But he can still play along. “It’s a nicotine patch, Neil.”

Neil mock-gasps. "A nicotine patch?"

"Don't be a smart-ass."

Neil snorts. “Is it helping?”

Andrew thinks about it and shrugs. He still really, really wants a cigarette. “Not really.”

Neil kisses his shoulder. “I appreciate the effort.”

Andrew turns around and kisses the corner of his mouth.

“I’m not doing it for you.”

Neil grins. “That’s the spirit.”

**Author's Note:**

> LONG TIME NO ANDREIL. hi guys i've missed you. please leave kudos/comments if you liked it :)


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